The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller (23 page)

“We?” he said as he swallowed the bread.

“Yes,
we
. If I go down I am sure as hell blaming you for it.” John Henry smiled at his old friend for the first time.

“And what will stop me and my men from escaping at the first opportunity?”

“I will have more than a hundred federal personnel on board to stop you. I will have twenty marines on each ship who will be more than happy to shoot each and every one of you.” He smiled wider. “So, nothing is stopping you at the moment. After all, Jessy, you’ve done so well in the war thus far.”

Taylor returned the smile as his eyes went to Gray Dog, who was watching the exchange with interest. “I guess we both may have failed to achieve much, other than running into trouble.”

“As usual. From West Point to Indian territory, our luck remains unchanged.”

Taylor slid his empty coffee cup toward Thomas. Ignoring it, Thomas stood and retrieved the whiskey bottle and poured that into the cup instead. He poured himself a drink and then held it up to Jessy.

“To insanity at its best,” Thomas said in toast.

“May it ever be so humble.” Taylor hesitated and then said, “And always alive and prevalent.”

The two men drank, Taylor ate, and they made a plan that fit with the crazy mission to which they had been assigned.

Gray Dog watched the two friends as they argued over the parameters of the mission ahead of them. As he studied the two officers he knew what they were missing—a belief in the far-off mountain and the killing powers that dwelled there. But there was also something else the Comanche noticed—the two men had something between them that was unspoken. Gray Dog was sure that these two men were no longer the friends who had once thought of each other as brothers—there might even be hatred there. Underlying, but hate nonetheless. He was silent as the men planned the fate of so many.

The expedition to God’s forbidden mountain would begin in less than sixteen hours.

NEWARK, NEW JERSEY

It was one
A.M.
when the eighteen covered army wagons from the ferry started to unload their unusual cargo. Most of the men had to be assisted from the transports by the U.S. Marine guard detail assigned to Thomas. They would escort the detail to Washington. As Thomas watched from the train platform he was joined by the naval engineer Ericsson, who was brought to John Henry by a subdued and very tired Sergeant Major Dugan. Without a word Dugan walked away to further assist the weakened Rebel soldiers. John Henry watched as Jessy Taylor spoke with each man before he was led to a railroad car. His eyes roamed to the perimeter of the out-of-the-way platform and saw his marine snipers stationed where he had left them. They were there to guarantee no prying eyes. It wouldn’t do to have the public learn that more than a hundred prisoners of war vanished overnight.

“I had not been told this part of the plan. I am shocked at their condition.” Ericsson, usually brash in thought as well as speech, was wringing his hands. Thomas knew him to be a man who tried not to think about what his marvelous inventions were capable of. The result, while not directly related to his work, was disturbing nonetheless to the engineer.

“We all knew this wasn’t going to be a pretty thing when it started.” He took his gaze away from the emaciated men below shown in flickering torch light and then fixed Ericsson with his blue eyes. “The president knew going in this was going to be personal. The worst fights are always between brothers, it seems. This is the end result of two hundred years of blind faith that this could never happen, not here. This is what we deserve.”

“I sense a bitterness in you far beyond what you are seeing, sir,” Ericsson said, almost as disturbed by the colonel’s sadness as the vision of the prisoners being loaded like cattle.

“My family were ranchers once, or so we had hoped, a few years ago. One by one they were taken by Indians, sickness, or just plain despair. But that made some sense; it was life. This”—he gestured toward the Confederate prisoners—“is blackness. Hate that has been boiling over for years, and I am so tired of it. Sometimes I think we don’t deserve to continue on as a nation.”

“Surely you believe in the cause in the North?” Ericsson asked in his heavily accented English.

“That”—he pointed at the last of the starved men were boarded—“is the end result of two causes. If it weren’t that or this, it would be him, or them. Yes, Professor Ericsson, I don’t give a good damn for causes anymore.”

Ericsson did not pursue another question. He could see the man before him now saw the end result of his craft and he hated himself for being a part of it. To his relief, the sergeant major reappeared with the Comanche Indian in tow. Ericsson was frightened of the red man, so he quickly tipped his hat toward the colonel and then left to board the more comfortable car farther up the line.

“Detail is all aboard, Colonel.”

Thomas looked at Dugan and nodded. The sergeant major, he knew, was feeling the same sense of horror he was at the sight of the prisoners. Dugan was having a hard time justifying his hatred toward the secessionists the way he had only two days before.

“Are there plenty of blankets and water in those cars?”

“Yes, Colonel. They have rations for the ride to Washington.” Dugan was about to turn and walk away when he stopped and, without turning back to face Thomas, said, “Colonel, I can’t bring myself to lock them in.”

Thomas saw the sergeant major’s shoulders slump as he waited for Thomas to blow up over prisoner security.

“Those men have to be protected from themselves for the time being, Sergeant Major. They won’t be thinking right until they have their strength back. So until that time comes, lock them in. They would only be committing suicide if they tried to escape like this.”

“I didn’t see it that way,” Dugan said and then slowly walked off. Gray Dog lingered, watching the small man lower his head as he started to place chains through the doors of the boxcars.

“Why keep other white men in cages?”

John Henry started down the platform steps and started to make his way toward the cars in the front of the train.

“Some things aren’t so easily explained, Gray Dog. Let’s just say the white men are angry and you can thank God they stay that way.” He looked at the Comanche as he spied Jessy Taylor waiting by the steps of the passenger car. His old gray coat had been replaced by a private’s blue blouse and he was wearing a Union cap. “Because when this madness is done, they only have one way to turn after that.”

Gray Dog did not need an explanation of the words of John Henry. He looked at the last of the locks and chains going on the doors and then followed the colonel. He didn’t board the train but climbed to its roof instead and then sat. Thomas shook his head as he confronted Taylor.

“Is this the treatment we can expect for the entire journey?” Taylor asked as he placed his arm across the car’s opening, stopping Thomas from entering.

“Until I can trust you, yes.” Thomas lowered Taylor’s arm and stepped up the stairs to the car’s interior.

“And when is that? When we’re at sea and can’t run?”

John Henry stopped and turned. He was backlit by the oil lamps inside the car and Taylor couldn’t make out his friend’s features. He looked like a Greek god looking down from on high with a heavenly glow.

“No, not even then, Jessy. When we get to Turkey, we’ll discuss your men at length and the ways to earn my trust. Now, let me buy you a drink and figure out how we can do what’s asked of us and get all of these boys back in one piece.” He stepped aside and gestured for Jessy to go ahead.

“Something tells me you won’t succeed.”

“That’s why I was chosen. It’s called being expendable.”

The locomotive sounded its whistle and the train started to move south.

8

The train with its human cargo was six miles outside of Baltimore. John Henry Thomas and Jessy Taylor paused while going over the map of the Ottoman Empire. Taylor leaned back on the bench and then toyed with the half-full whiskey bottle. He glanced out of the dingy, soot-covered window and then his heart caught in his chest. Was his bad eye giving him that much trouble?

“What is the story on that little fella?” he asked while still staring out the window.

John Henry folded the map and then saw what Taylor was looking at. A surreal vision was staring in at them from an upside-down position. Gray Dog adjusted his feet and then vanished from the window as if he had never been there.

“Long story. But where we’re going we may need that Comanche’s insight into certain things.”

“Well, I surely hope he doesn’t go popping his head in with my men until they get used to him,” Taylor said, staring at the spot where the Indian had been. “Now,” he said as he turned back to Thomas. “Tell me about this Sultan Abdülaziz.”

John Henry pulled out a sheaf of papers and rummaged through them until he came to the page he needed. “From all accounts he’s so interested in modernizing his empire that he pays little attention to his subjects. Secretary Seward believes he hasn’t but a few years in power left before the people oust him. Sultans do not have a good track record for keeping their subjects happy, and every twenty or thirty years they let the monarchy know in no uncertain terms just how angry they are. Seward’s assessment is that he’s so weak of mind that we should have very little trouble posing as railroad and army engineers.”

“Sounds about as foul a situation as we have here, huh, Yank?”

“Knock that crap off. Yank, Reb, it all amounts to being idiots.” John Henry put away the report on the sultan but held his eyes firmly on his old pal from the Point. “From the time we board ship until the time we return, we’re neither northerner nor southerner. If we go in separate, they will pick apart our little ruse very quickly.”

Taylor smiled with his swollen lips. “That’s what your Mr. Lincoln wants anyway, doesn’t he? What I mean to say is, he is not known to be overly zealous when it comes to religion. He doesn’t think that damn children’s tale is even there, does he?”

Thomas had to admit to a degree that Taylor was right. He had never known Lincoln to bend a knee to God or anything else. Lincoln believed in law. The Constitution was his Bible and that was why they were in the war they were in. So, no, he did not believe the president was in awe at Ollafson’s tale of wonder. But then, he also knew the president had absolutely nothing to lose but a military officer whose career was in the outhouse and a Reb colonel who had seen far better days. This was not counting the men under his command—at least on the southern side they were as expendable as both colonels leading them. He didn’t yet know what army dregs were going to be tossed into this bizarre equation.

Instead of commenting on Taylor’s observation on his commander-in-chief, he brought out the Confederate roster. “You’ll need an adjutant. Who do you suggest?” He slid the roster across the table and Taylor, after downing a small glass of whiskey, looked it over. It only took him a moment.

“Corporal Poteet. He served with me in New Mexico territory. He’s the only Texan I’ve ever known that could track those damnable Apaches. Yes, he’ll make a fine sergeant major, with your permission of course.”

“Permission granted,” Thomas said as he underlined the name. His eyes continued to survey the roster of starved men even though his brain had stopped taking in information.

“You don’t believe in this mission?” Taylor asked as he poured himself and Thomas another drink.

“Not at all.” He took the drink and downed it and then looked up and saw Gray Dog standing next to him in the aisle. He had come upon them without sound or flash of movement.

“Riders, John Henry. Twenty or more.”

At that moment the train started to slow. The whistle sounded as Thomas stood. “Gray Dog, alert Sergeant Major Dugan and the marines. This isn’t right.”

John Henry looked at Taylor and then stood from his chair. Jessy started to do the same but John Henry motioned him back down.

“With that drawl of yours, may I suggest you sit this one out, Colonel?”

“I’ll keep this bottle company. It’s a better conversationalist anyway,” he said as he downed another shot.

John Henry felt the train decelerate rapidly as Dugan entered from another car with two marines next to him.

“What have we got?” Dugan asked as he quickly lowered the window closest to him and looked out, first toward the front of the slowing train and then the rear. “Goddamn Injun is right. We have riders, Colonel Darlin’.”

The train came to a screeching stop and as John Henry stepped out of the car he saw why. Fire was blazing on the very rails on which they traveled. “Sergeant Major, take ten marines and filter into these woods. Wait until you see something untoward and then move on the element if you have to.”

“And what is untoward, Colonel?”

“Untoward means me being shot for any reason.”

“Yes, sir.”

John Henry saw the first of the riders approach at a gallop. He could see by the long gold stripe on his pant leg that he was a cavalry officer, and by the looks of his mount he had been riding hard for quite some time. The horse and rider were both lathered with the effort.

“I am looking for Colonel John Henry Thomas,” he said as the horse skidded to a stop.

Thomas stepped forward and addressed the young first lieutenant. “I’m Thomas.”

The rider removed his gauntlet, reached into his uniform tunic, and pulled out an envelope.

“From the war department, sir.”

Thomas took the message and stepped into the light streaming from the car. He opened the envelope and saw the words. As he read, John Henry realized he was dealing with something he had not been briefed on.

“Sergeant Major Dugan,” he called out.

The rider and his accompanying men heard the sound of several Spencer carbines as they were cocked and uncocked.

“Sir!” Dugan said as he stepped from the trees.

“Lieutenant, did anyone think to bring me some wagons?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. Twenty army wagons are a mile back.”